Category: about me

Pure Vanity.

Memorial Day in Fisherman’s Wharf

The loud pounding distortion of a hip hop baseline pushed through way too tiny speakers caused me to look behind as I crossed the street. I saw the car and who was inside and then did a double take. Inside the rice burner was a middle-aged white guy with a bandana that could pass for Steve Carell.

I had to share this “life imitates art” moment with someone so I called Dave Kellogg. We started to talk about Lunch 2.0 as I headed toward In-N-Out Burger for dinner. Cat Guy passed me on his bicycle mumbling something about “cat lovers only.” I turned the corner and continued to talk with Dave. We were on the subject of Guy Kawasaki.

“RAAAARRHHHHHRRRRGGGGG!!!”

I almost jumped out of my jeans. A crowd of tourists were in a semicircle around me, laughing. “Shit, Dave, Bush Man1 got me! Hold on, I have to give him a buck.”

I love San Francisco.

Pier 39

Pier 39
Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco, California

Nikon D200, Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G VR
1/80 sec @ f/13, iso 100, 18mm (27mm)

1 Just in case you don’t know, most of the panhandlers in the Fisherman’s Wharf area have a shtick. Bush Man squats behind two branches he holds in front of him and scares unsuspecting tourists for money. He also makes passing references to his blackness if the tourists are white (which they invariably are). I was actually thinking yesterday that I hadn’t seen Bush Man in a while. I dropped some money in, did the boxer greet thing with him, and went about my way.
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Discussion and Democracy

“…our democracy is in danger of being hollowed out. In order to reclaim our birthright, we Americans must resolve to repair the systemic decay of the public forum. We must create new ways to engage in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about our future…Americans in both parties should insist on the re-establishment of respect for the rule of reason.”
—Al Gore, from The Assault of Reason in Time Magazine

I started this blog after the 2004 election with a purpose to “write to create context for another to think.”

Whether it is morals, politics, technology and industry, or every day life, each of us has both a right and obligation to participate on the public forum. Thank you, the reader, for taking some of your time to be a part of this conversation.

Posted on by tychay 4

EVE online

Since I was working on a web-tool to detect and clean HTML embed codes, Firefox was experiencing some intermittent crashing. Today I loaded up my page in Safari, seeing the site for the first time in weeks without my banner ad blocker:

Eve Online, Afro Samurai and other Tagged madness

The banner ad is for Eve Online which is a MMORPG imported from Korea. Someone I know just accepted a job for a similar company so this is a big shout-out to you (you know who you are).

BTW, Afro Samurai did a takeover a couple weeks ago. I decided to change my tagged profile theme to the promo. It’s a pity that I don’t get cable and this isn’t on iTunes, because it looks like an interesting show.

(I had cable until yesterday, but didn’t know it since I never connected it. I found out today when they left a note on my door saying they cut it.)
Continue reading →

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Plaxo is evil. Plaxo is spam.

Disclaimer: I worked as an engineer at Plaxo a long time ago (in internet years… in human years it was five months ago).

In October of last year, an engineering colleague asked me about this whole “Plaxo is evil. Plaxo is spam” thing. At the time I went in to a long boring lecture about Plaxo and privacy/security. (I don’t need to go into it here, you can read this to get a taste.)

After sitting through it, he asked me this simple question: “If you didn’t work for Plaxo, would you use it?”

I answered, “I’ll do you one better. I’m not going to be working for Plaxo much longer, and I’ll continue to use it after I leave.”

“Good enough for me.”

[The power of connections. The power of search. After the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 11

Barcamp Sacramento

BarCamp Sacramento, June 2-3

Adam Kalsey and Scott Hildebrand of SacStarts are holding a BarCamp in Sacramento on June 2nd and 3rd.

BarCamp is a conference where the participants are the speakers. Show up, sign up to give a session, and get going. There’s lots of networking in the halls, food, great conversations, and you’ll even learn a thing or two.

I love the price (free) 🙂 I’ll be there, maybe you should also. Maybe I’ll dig up an old talk or or test drive a new one (no doubt there will be some PHP involved in mine).

Show your support for the Web people a little further inland and signup!

Posted on by tychay 0

The Lunch 2.0 story so far

Lunch 20 @AOL.COM

LUNCH 20 @AOL.COM
AOL, Mountain View, California

Nikon D70, Nikkor 12-24mm f/4G
f/4 at 1/25 second, iso 500, 12mm (18mm)

Summer is here and Lunch 2.0 is starting up again. There are two events scheduled already, and from two of my favorite Web 2.0 startups to boot!

The first one will be at LinkedIn. Which is important because their founder is on the board of the company that pays my salary. We’re the second entry in their newly-born corporate blog! Next step: get Mario to blog about my LinkedIn Haikus (they really work, honest!).

The other one will Ning on June 14. Little known factoid: Ning was our very first Lunch 2.0, even if they didn’t know it. (Ahh, back in the good old days when Lunch 2.0 meant sneaking into a company’s cafeteria and sticking our Lunch 2.0 flag in the ground… or fork in their cake.)

IMG_0563.JPG by Mario Sundar

Gina Bianchini of Ning and Reid Hoffmann of LinkedIn at Web 2.0 Expo. Two people dear to my heart. And it’s not because they’re hosting Lunch 2.0.

Oh, who am I kidding. It is. We love you guys! 😀

The what and wherefore of lunch-two-point-oh

Lunch 2.0 is about participating in an interesting conversation over a free lunch.

If you are interested in being a diner, going to a Lunch 2.0 is really easy. Just say you’re going to attend and our hosts will deal with the fallout. 😀 Afterwards, write about it in your blog, post some photos, or produce a video. (Send us an e-mail so we can link it.) While that’s not a requirement, it’s that sort of buzz is what pays the bills when our hosts have to justify this craziness to their corporate overlords. Or, if you are a corporate overlord, host one yourself…

If you want to host a Lunch 2.0, it’s really easy to become an “eatery.” Just send Mark or me an e-mail. We really want to eat your lunch. Honest! Mark explained our philosophy best:

Lunch 2.0, much like Web 2.0, is all about being open. We welcome any companies that are interested in hosting Lunch 2.0 events 🙂

C’mon Lunch 2.0 has got to be hipper than that moleskine that you carry around to keep your lo-tech creds up.

Lunch 2.0: Taste the buzz.

Warning: A long and inconsistent story ahead

Speaking of waxing nostalgic, I think it’s about time I finally post this article about the Lunch 2.0 story. The first time I tried to write this was in response to a query by FutureWorks back in October of last year. The second was in February to celebrate the first anniversary of Lunch 2.0. This will be the third attempt, so it’ll be a long one…

It’s about time I got my story straight about this Lunch 2.0 thing (or at least, my lies consistent). What follows is the honest-to-God truth (uh, sort of).

[How we created Lunch 2.0: The True Hollywood Story after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 27

It’s going to be ugly

My favorite productivity trick has got to be moving everything on my desktop into a folder to be looked at later and everything in my inbox into the ” refile” mailbox.

An empty desktop and a clean mail folder and all of a sudden you’re more productive.

I think the technical term for this is “pushing the reset button”, except in my version of it, there is no shutdown notification. (If I weren’t such a poser, I’d twitter it.)

I tried that today.

[The fallout after the jump.]Continue reading →

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What people want

“2 Drink Minimum” by 500hats
You’ll have to read until the end to find out why I included this photo.

Holly wrote recently that your most passionate users don’t necessarily build the best products. It’s really worth a read.

I think the problem comes from the fact that there is often a large difference between what people say they want, and what people really want.

Forgetting that this difference exists and being insensitive to a customer’s true desires is the source of many mistakes I’ve made and lessons I’ve learned.

What follows is an example of each of those things two things: a mistake and a lesson.

[Michael and me after the jump.]Continue reading →

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